


Whoever fights monsters

by Mr_K_chan



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassin!Corvo, Assassin!Outsider, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, God!Corvo, God!Daud, Introspection, Lord Protector!Daud, Lord Protector!Outsider, More tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-08 00:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7736389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_K_chan/pseuds/Mr_K_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.</p><p>-Friedrich Nietzsche</p><p> </p><p>Of God, and Monsters, and Men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Leviathan

**Author's Note:**

> Dishonored, I've never played you
> 
> But alas, you've infected me so
> 
> My muses, curse you
> 
> Fickle bastards

He does not remember the time when he was anything _less_

(Though it isn't really true; he catches snippets, glances—the crash of the waves and the feeling of water sting as it fills him, salt preserving his insides—

He tries not to remember, but it's always

There.)

His home is the endless Abyss—the depths of the oceans' deep. That place where no light reaches, no air to breathe, oxygen thin and thready like the last notes of whalesong ringing through water. The place below the grave of ships, their bare bones whittled away by the gentle gnawing of the tides.

Here he isn't king, but it's close enough that it doesn't matter. The Void shall always have it's messenger, the face it shows when it breaks the surface.

( _Leviathan_ , he hears the waves whisper to him from above. His kingdom is the land of the dark, black water and his temple is this drowned body.

It still hurts every time he tries to breathe.)

Those above him call him many names. Leviathan. The Dragon. The Kraken.

Of these, The Outsider is one he prefers best.

He isn't sure if this is because of his heritage, of the things he remembers; of being on the outside, looking in. Of petty jealousies and anger, and hunger—

He understands well enough that being dragged into that fold was his end; in a way, it always will be.

Sometimes he sees himself, a creature looking outward looking in. He sees eyes as dark as his abode, girth enormous as he had been small in life. The Leviathan is king of all fishes and all sea creatures, monstrous or not.

But. He isn't King, and this is not his kingdom. It is still a comfort, this other form of his. Claiming kindred to the whales isn't the worst lot he could cast. The creatures are gentle, will never wish harm on anyone, least of all to one of their own.

(Perhaps it speaks something of his gentleness, though he isn't sure he has any. Even the most gentle can destroy utterly, for kindness would always be the cruelest of cruelties.)

 

Time matters not in the Abyss: he watches the humans, the things which had made him and rendered him more-less than he is now and has been. It was like watching the stretch of beach between sea and land; the grains are minuscule, but sometimes you will find something precious amongst the sand if you look hard enough.

Vera was one of them, a pretty cowrie shell he picked up. She was discontent with her lot in life, always meant to be something more than what society wanted her to be. A rebel, this woman, a storm trapped within a too-fragile body, a soul that wants more, more, _more_. She embodies that aspect of the human spirit that He wants to call avarice.

He has not answered to the petty cries of the fools who made him (then and now, because no matter what they say, he is not a god, and that much he knows but humanity had always been a stupid, foolish sort of child), but her pleas he answers (because he is deathly curious and ah, wasn't that the way he died? Curiosity had always been his downfall). He gives her power, teaches her the art of how to bind the Void to the mortal realm, teaches her of bones and whalesong and darkness etched with the purpose of destruction, oblivion, protection. Then he steps back to wait. 

She does not disappoint.

Oh, how entertaining, the way she makes her mark on the world; she holds true to his teachings, sows death destruction oblivion in her wake, and she laughs laughs laughs when she presents her husband to him in devotion thanks gratitude, a pile of bones crimson wet with life and His runes etched on them with death.

He realises his mistake a little too late; shells may have been the abode of something living, but once that has left, there was nothing. And his precious Vera has given up to him her soul, leaving a husk behind.

The cowrie had broken into a hundred pieces. Unsalvageable. And so he left.

She wasn't as beautiful as before, tattered as she is. Useful for another, perhaps, but ultimately, she's nothing of interest anymore. He feels no guilt in tossing her aside.

Granny Rags may still call to him, may claw her eyes out in despair for him, but he will not go to her. Not now, not ever.

 

Delilah was a pebble, a whitewashed thing left ashore. Pretty to look at. He keeps her because of the way she reminds him of opals, pretty stones that glimmer into a myriad of colours once held up at the right angle to the light.

She amuses him for a little while, though he never deigned to look closer. All she wanted first was small things, so minuscule he never thought twice when he granted them.

When she first drew the Void, that was when he realised that when children aren't disciplined, they get spoilt rotten. And ah, she is already plenty spoiled.

He leaves her be, but she doesn't notice. Foolish girl, content with her paints and her dreams. She paints a girl and desires her body, to have what she has. She wants what was _his_ , and he would have laughed. Poor girl, asking for what she does not understand.

He sends to her a dagger stained with the girl's mother's blood. She will not know what her envy has cost her, even as her life flows away from the carmine smile in her neck.

And so his pretty pebble becomes lacklustre, and he tosses it away.

 

Daud was a piece of pumice, he thinks. All jagged, sharp edges, born from an inferno of hardship and pain. He gives him his mark, and he influences others to join him; a wildfire like magma spreading slow across the earth.

Daud burns everything he touches.

He watches with waning interest; what a fool, this boy, to trade his gifts for coin. He remembers a parable, of servants given talents, and one who buried his share in the ground.

His interest piques when he sinks his sword into the heart of an Empress, and watches as his eyes go wild. What have I done, Daud wails at him, and he looks down to see that it's not only his coat that is red anymore. To ease his conscience, he gives him a name, and he plays his role as a hired sword, only one paid with blood and guilt and madness. 

He sends a scorned father-protector after him, a creature broken by the death of his beloved and the only link to her taken away, his last remaining blood.

The ending of that is most amusing—even he doesn't know what happens next.

 

Corvo is.

That is what he is, in this young-old creature's mind. He simply is.

Corvo was something he passed on by, insignificant and small. A crow (like his name, always) which drops in front of him to sift through the sands for himself. Two stones, near-identical, the tongues of oysters, one white and one streaked with brown. He had watched as this bird lays his prize beside His own stones—pearls, and most rare, to find them outside their shells.

When he cast away his pumice (Daud, sweet, ignoble, _stupid_ Daud), it lands on the larger of the stones. The pearl, for all it's whiteness, was empty. It immediately shatters.

(A sword pierces through the heart of an Empress, and there is despair thick and heavy on a tongue, one or two, or three.)

Sometimes, he thinks Corvo is sea-glass, obsidian; something he picks up on a passing fancy. Translucent when held up to the sun, he bends light to his will, an imperfect prism.

He's had multiple others; he almost casts it aside to search for something brighter.

(Corvo tries so hard, poor misguided child, the Outsider muses. He never did have a good lot in life.)

He watched as the little crow attempts to sieve ocean-water for salt through a piece of cheesecloth, to try to hold on to everything he considered dear; his love, his child, the tenuous peace in his adoptive home. Like sand in an hourglass, it all falls away between his fingers. He had always been out of time.

The first time he awakens in that prison (the physical one, for his own mental irons had been in effect for longer), that was when Corvo started to shine.

And he, _He_ , was so very intrigued.

He gave him his Mark, and his favour. And then he sat back to watch.

And oh, the possibilities.

How stunning indeed, the rainbow cast by that jagged prism. He sees a man who shies away from blood and filth, and another, who paves the road he walks in vermilion.

(How similar, the paths his two stones take. And isn't it an irony that obsidian and pumice are volcanic in origin?)

He makes them clash, and he lies back to wait.

 

When this too has dulled, he too shall fade away.

(He not-remembers a time there were two Leviathans instead of one. Legends speak of the other, a female, being slaughtered for the table of the righteous.

In the end, he too is the same.)

The Abyss isn't his kingdom, and he isn't king. He is a sacrifice laid at the altar, awaiting the knife of the offeror. He isn't a god or God in any way, shape, or form.

In the end, He is nothing.

(And how fitting indeed, for the creature of the Void to be void himself.)

The Void will always have its messenger, though it will not always be him.

The Outsider is finite, and he thus ends. The world moves on without him, and another takes his place.


	2. Ziz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting  
> On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;  
> And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,  
> And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;  
> And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor  
>             Shall be lifted—nevermore!
> 
> -Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bastard muses, feed my soul
> 
> Of the things I yearn
> 
> What I wish is inspiration
> 
> For Pokémon and Persona
> 
> But alas
> 
> Have at it, fight me

There is little known about Corvo except his Name.

Corvo. _Corvo_. A bunch of consonants and a single vowel. The _oh_ , a sigh, an exclamation. Of awe? Disappointment? Even he does not remember.

There is very little remaining of Corvo except his name.

(Though even that remains a mystery. What he is and what he was was thrown off the cliff along with him. His bones still ache with the loss as his body batters the rocks below.)

The people had made him a god, but He full well knows he isn't one. What God lives in a world smaller than himself? When he stretches out his wings, they touch the walls of the sky, blocking out the sun.

He is no god, and his world is his cage, but people still worship him all the same.

The Raven, they call him. He wants to correct them, but speech had left him long ago.

His tongue had long since been feed for the birds when he died. (He's little better off as a sparrow than a bird of prey, but they scrounge for his mercy even then. He can only sigh and sigh and sigh. People are such fools.)

The skies and the winds give him another name. Ziz, Phoenix, Roc. He doesn't answer to any of these. He still is simply

Corvo. 

He isn't fit to be king or King over everything or anything, and the Void is not a kingdom but a cage for something bigger-smaller than himself. He had always been a free spirit, and this is the greatest travesty humanity could make: to trap a soul and bind it so utterly it simply forgets anything else.

The people who worship, they make him shrines of sticks and feathers. To appeal to the bird, entice it to alight. He would have laughed if he could; one does not trap without bait.

The magpies they leave at his altars abhor him all the more. And so he doesn't come.

But he is Corvo (a crow through and through), and his attention is birdlike, easily caught. The people learn to line his shrines with blue silks and silver thread. They offer him runes, charms carved into the bones of birds. He doesn't come to any of them, but he blesses them all the same.

He isn't god, but he offers protection to those who seek it.

Some of those who sought Him were interesting. Little pinpricks that shine in the ink of the sky. Vera was one of the more notable ones. She sought him for a way out of her misery, for a key to the velvet cage that is her life. In kindred suffering he offers her power, power to seek out her fortune.

He learns of his folly when she offers him her husband's head on a silver platter. She is obsessed; obsessed with him and the raw power he exudes.

 _I am not a God_ , he rages silently. She offers him her eyes. He flees from her.

Vera's star has burned out. He could only mourn its loss.

 

Some of his more notable finds aren't among his followers.

Sokolov's interest intrigues him as much as it disgusts him; why would a man waste so much time searching for what would not be found? He grants his boon instead to another man no less brilliant but scorned by his peers, and he watches Sokolov supernova with green jealousy hate anger when his prayers go unanswered and Joplin receives without so much as asking, a burden he does not want. 

The old boatman he watches over. This young-old god is genuinely fond of Samuel; rare ilk like his have a healthy respect for what they do not understand, fear and awe blending together in not-worship. Samuel's silence is something he blesses better than the most extravagant sacrifices.

He is never unkind to the non-believers, but even apathy can be a cruelty. The Abbey of the Everyman may both scorn and worship him at the same time, and the only reward they gain from it is his silence.

(He has long since lost the capacity to answer for himself. The Void needs a representative, not a voice to speak of its own wishes. Besides, god-messengers should not have dreams of their own.)

 

A blade sinks into the heart of an Empress, and he finds Himself intrigued.

Daud languishes in despair, trapped in the prison that is his starved body and the cold cell of Coldridge. He finds him, and his not-heart goes out for this boy-man who fought tooth and nail for his lot in life. Who lost Empress-lover-wife and princess-daughter in the fall swoop of a sword. 

(It isn't right, his broken bones protest, and he not-remembers—what? A family of his own, a wife, a daughter—

He is nothing. The Void has seen to that.)

So he grants him a Heart and his favour, and sees the paths beyond him. Of Daud staining the world around him darker than the red of his coat, of staying his blade in a show of mercy that had never been granted to him in all his years—

Corvo nods, and looks away. His gaze is called elsewhere.

To. To…

To _him_.

 _He_ is something he had mixed feelings about; a doubt when gods have no right to doubt. He gave him his Mark as a sign of his mercy (for Corvo is plenty merciful, but he's long since learned now that sometimes a sword and a swift death is more merciful than prolonging the pain. There are few things worse than the Void's embrace into nothingness), and this boy, this ridiculous, _fascinating_ boy had forgotten any notion of mercy and cast it away to sate his own curiosity.

Corvo has forgotten that Men are far more dangerously curious than Gods.

 _Is your thirst slaked_ , He wants to ask this child, who only could stare at his hands stained with the life of one he was never meant to take. Still, He was nothing but kind, and had given him a way to ease the hollow in his chest.

(Kindness is the cruelest of cruelties. Corvo often forgets this.)

And so he makes them meet; Daud with his anger and his loss and his betrayal, and _him_ , he who has given up his name in exchange for Power and was drowned by it, in the ring of Fate. The sky closes over them, velvet curtain falling prematurely over the tale, and Corvo laments.

This is one ending he will never see.

 

Even though the sky is wide and endless, it means nothing when it is still smaller than what Corvo _is_.

His gilded cage crushes him, screams silent in the wake of the end. But it doesn't matter in the slightest, whatever he thinks or cannot say.

The Void will always have its messenger, and in the end, he is as expendable as the people he watches.

When He fades, he is alone. He will always be alone.

(And there will only be his silence, for not even his Name will remain.)


	3. Behemoth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even gods remember what it means to be human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now Daud.
> 
> To be done.
> 
> I need a real life.
> 
> *ded

Daud is always himself.

Himself and himself (in both ways of the word, rearrangement of letters in his name, a slight skip and a hop to something that is both decay and sweet release, god and man mere vowels apart). He laughs and laughs in his decaying mind (decaying from the outside but not inside, stretched as wide as the Void filling him filling it and he remembers so so much) and with his own lips, tongue, voice because there is very little not amusing in the grand scheme of things.

(One takes a man and crushes it under the heels of an elephant, in supplication, like a worshipper throwing themselves into the rolling wheels of a juggernaut. 

He still doesn't understand how a god could be made from what remained. Coincidentally, he stopped praying long before he was offered.)

His temple is this body, the Void housed in the belly of the great elephant. People offer him runes carved from ivory in the comfort of shrines swathed in grey. He only laughs; he isn't a god no matter what they all say. He remembers what he was well because the Void doesn't let him forget.

The Void may be his home, but it is foreign to him; home is a land filled with warmth and endless sunshine, the sea lapping at his ankles. All around him now is the desert, dry and thirsting and so very empty. 

(He will never return home, this much he knows.)

The Void teaches him mercy, but his humanity taught him cruelty. His Worshippers learn that with every gift, an equal price is paid. None of what he does is for free, after all. 

He still finds it foolish of them to keep on currying for his favour, however. Desperation breeds many interesting things, he knows this. They build him shrines of grey and ivory and beg and plead with their runes and charms and songs to no avail. Daud only answers to the call of crimson red life and the chill of death on steel.

He has no love for those whose futures are as white as the desert sun.

And humanity is so desperate for a God that they made him, and they now fear him once they realise their own folly. Daud only has laughter and mockery in his head for the poor souls.

He takes great care in marking who interests him, lest he loses them in the swarm of gadflies that is the mortal realm. He teaches them the songs written in their bones beneath their flesh and the whispers that call from the encompassing brightness of the Void. 

Delilah took well to his teachings, and he watches with abject horror-fascination at the things she produces under her Marked hands. Human greed is all-encompassing, he murmurs with wonder, and he encourages her. He hasn't had an equal to duel with in ages.

( _In some cultures, stealing is punishable by death,_ He recalls. He also thinks it's fitting; the desert isn't one to cultivate any form of life but the hardiest, and any Rose planted in its soils shall die of thirst.)

Billie was more than what she was. Her master had marked her, but she will always be one of His. Strong, wilful. Eager to learn and to do what she is bid. The perfect guard dog.

( _Treachery is a grave offence; only the traitors are placed in the deepest bowels of Hell_. He laughs at this. Surely an eternity in hell is a vacation when the earth is worse than hell itself.)

Corvo is a favourite grown dull, he thinks. So much wasted potential, thrown away in the favour of earthly things (things He would have likely done for himself, but couldn't have—being very dead tends to do things like that). He used to shine so, does so even now, but the interesting angles on him had grown familiar. Perhaps a little too much so.

With his blade he worshipped the god who branded him in the way he does best. Daud approves (and this he keeps to himself; the Void only needs a messenger, not a ruler).

When that blade sinks into the Heart of an Empress, the blood washes away the grime from another. And Daud was positively _intrigued_.

This boy. This boy was _fascinating_.

The first time, he was small and insignificant. Minuscule that no one even bothered to give him a name. 

(Names have power. It's a travesty to leave this creature of the earth without one. To be nameless is to be intrinsically weak and forgotten.

Daud is not surprised this little outsider has latched on to the only thing he could claim as himself. The title Lord Protector is as good a name as any.)

This weakling, the child without a name, he shined so. The bright Morning Star in the bleached sky of the Void. And Daud positively _ached_ to taste his blood between his teeth.

So he baits him, offers him power to take back what was _never_ rightfully his, and the boy took it without a second thought.

This boy will burn both ends to rescue his princess just as Corvo had done so many years ago. It was positively thrilling.

Daud wonders sometimes what it will be like, making them meet. Old and new, blades drawn and spitting. Curses and praises raised to the heavens and oh. It is absolutely glorious.

 

Some things are just never meant to be.

Daud is less than the dust he is trampled on, and in the end, the desert shall leave him like so. In pieces smaller than the sand in the winds, nothing left of him even his memory.

He isn't God or god of the prison that is the Void. And in the end, he too is nothing.


End file.
